Winding down Xero Personal in November 2014

We wanted to let you know we are discontinuing Xero Personal at the end of November next year. We know that is 14 months away but we wanted to give everyone plenty of warning. We are sending an email and messaging in-app to all Xero Personal customers.

[UPDATE After reviewing a range of options, we’ve arranged a great deal with PocketSmith. If you are a Xero Personal customer and sign up with PocketSmith by 31 December 2013, you will get the first 12 months at half price (NZD$59.95 vs $120). PocketSmith has live bank feeds (except for BNZ at the moment), as well as features you’re used to such as a handy calendar view, cashflow projections and flexible budgeting. You can get your data across to PocketSmith in minutes with their Xero Express process. Find out more.]

We’ve seen huge growth in the number of customers using Xero’s core small business accounting and accountant’s tools. Unfortunately, by comparison only a small number of people are prepared to pay for an independent personal financial management tool.

Considering this, we reviewed the resources involved in developing and supporting Xero Personal compared with putting this resource into our business offerings. We then made the difficult decision to wind down the ongoing development of Xero Personal and shut it down on 30th November 2014.

On 30th September 2013 all annual subscriptions to Xero Personal at that point will be automatically extended from their expiry date until the service close down date at the end of November 2014, for no additional charge. Unless you receive a notification that you need to renew your current annual subscription prior to the 30th of September there is no other action you need to take to continue using the product through until the end of November next year.

If you are in trial and do want to continue using the product while it is available then sign up for an annual subscription before the 30th of September. This subscription will then be extended out until the end of November next year for no additional charge.

We appreciate this news will be a big disappointment for many of Xero Personal’s loyal customers, as it is for those Xero staff who have worked so hard on the product since it was first launched in March 2010.

Over the coming weeks we will send to our customers more updates on the wind down plan, information on how to get your data off Xero Personal before it is shut down and any alternative personal financial management services that you may want to consider transferring to.

We know that many of you will be disappointed and we apologize for any inconvenience.

133 comments

Brendan

October 15, 2013 at 11.37 am

I do pay for it and am happy to pay $50 a year, even without automated bank feeds, I don’t use them anyway. It’s not hard to upload an OBX or CSV file every week or month. Seriously, for that price it does quite a lot for the basic home budgetter. To offer a service and then pull it out when people are just starting to get used to it and use it is a real pain in the arse! It’s a good basic offering and is quite easy to use, please re-think this decision.

The principle weakness in the go to market strategy for this product and hence the poor customer reception is the bank feeds not being live – without this the product is next to as good as a spreadsheet. If this was operational and you sold the benefits of people not having to enter anything then I believe the level of interest would be much higher (the laziness factor for consumers cannot be ignored). The pricing however is a different point – this would clearly need to be much lower than the commercial product and accordingly the commecialisation model different – advertising and customer promotion linked to relevant consumer behaviour information would perhaps need to be added (much as I hate this stuff in products I use and why I like the clean interface of Xero as it is now but would understand the need if commercial viability was a issue). In any event I hope you reconsider this decision and give the product more time esp. if you turn on the bank feeds and also in light of recent funding announcements.

A credit from xero personal fees towards $10 xero cashbook adapted to personal expenses would go a long way towards repairing some of the goodwill – especially as we had been referring clients to it right up to the announcement of cancellation.

I’ve tried a number of products over the years including microsoft money and money wiz. Either they get withdrawn or dont do the same as Xero personal. Why oh why do Xero have to withdraw such a great product. Surely you can reconsider?

Xero offers a version of the business edition (without the ability to add invoices) called “cashbooks” which is only available through Xero partners (generally bookkeepers and accountants). The non GST version is much cheaper than the business version and I personally find it ideal for tracking our personal expenses…and it would be especially great for those of you who already use Xero for their businesses. Any NZ-ers posting here who are interested, please contact me via my website accounts2u.co.nz and I’d be happy to provide a quote.

Why not open source the project and have that model? at least then the project can continue to be maintained and developed upon, and at some point you may find it viable again to support it commercially (for prosumers) ?

Hey everybody! Please read the comments by Ed Henry and Mary Moore above.
I too used xero personal, but found it limited. By moving to the $10 per month non GST cashbook version, i now have a fully functioning xero ledger for my own finances.
So now I can offer xero to my individual clients, not just my business clients. This is a huge opportunity. Look beyond the square!!!!

Can you guys suggest any other alternative products.
This was the best product out there in the market and I was always happy to pay for it with all the savings we were getting from managing our finances better.

I too only got to grips with Xero Personal recently and love the tools for personal application… Please rather sell this to a company or review your business model it will be truly sad to see this awesome app go. I know most web app consumers don’t like paying expensive annual/monthly fees but surely by the responses so far you can see that there is a market for it. Even if it can be a subsidiary business to Xero like Workflow Max but just with an unique approach to personal book keeping.
All and all we love your product but will be sad to see it go 🙁

Our firm uses the Cashbook product for many of our individual clients and it works great. Some minor differences from Xero Personal but with the right configuration, its a powerful personal finance management tool. We’d be happy to help out any Xero Personal users who need to make the jump but want to stay on the Xero platform.

I do not think that is a smart idea.
Until five minutes ago, I was not even aware of the fact that Xero Personal did exist.
I think you guys just did not market it well enough.. is there a clear link from anywhere to the Xero homepage to this?

I think you give away a market without a reason and it will be regretted for sure.

For the last two weeks I was even considering creating sub accounts within my Xero business account to manage my personal finances… then I found an article about Xero Personal… and now I read you want to close it.. I think this is a very premature decision!

A 25% price hike after 4 – 5 months live running, with a month’s notice is unacceptable – you must have known about this. We also made the mistake of implementing Workflow Max at the same time and I wonder how long it will be before you increase this price as well. What an effort! What a cost! What an unhappy customer.

yeah I’m totally gobsmacked by this decision, my entire family have been using and supporting Xero personal for 3 years and happy to pay for it! I’ve not found another tool that is so easy and convenient to use. Sorry to see it go, wish there was a another Kiwi made product we could use. Any ideas?

For those who didn’t see our message yesterday we sent out details of an alternative to Xero Personal – Pocketsmith. PocketSmith has live bank feeds (except for BNZ at the moment), as well as features around cashflow projections and flexible budgeting. More details here http://psmth.to/xpoa.

Consistent with the Mint experience in the US, I believe that online personal financial management (PFM) in Australia will become a big growth area and provide considerable business opportunities. The comments above suggest that there is considerable consumer demand for a comprehensive PFM. The challenge is to implement the PFM with the right business model so that it is financially viable.

I have many years experience in developing financial planning software for professional financial planners. Based on this experience, I believe that the “software sales” model adopted by Xero Personal was highly unlikely to succeed and has most likely resulted in its demise. Having said that, I believe that if the PFM is tightly integrated with product and service offerings as done by Mint, then a profitable and viable business is achievable.

I have developed a prototype online PFM which enabled customers to gain a single view of their financial services product set, including everyday accounts, savings accounts, investments, superannuation and retirement, credit cards, home loans, personal loans and insurance.

The PFM provided a suite of online personal financial management tools; accommodated entities such as Companies and Trusts; generated a comprehensive and compliant Fact Find; and also facilitated the convenient provision of financial advice. It has also been designed to include the features planned for ASIC’s personalised money guidance service as detailed in the National Financial Literacy Strategy Report (March 2011).

Unfortunately the PFM did not make it to market due to a lack of funding. I am happy to discuss this with anyone who is interested in taking this prototype to market.

I use xero for business and myprosperity.com.au for all my personal affairs. i own a couple of rental properties and a holiday house so like the property info. from what i can see it does everything xero personal did like linking bank accounts etc.

My wife and I recently got back for a 1year trip around the world with no debt, it is a trip that was only made possible by the ease which Xero Personal gave us to manage and stick to our budget.

Admittedly we are not actually fantastic at budgeting but it goes to show the strength that this tool had. And the incredible help it was to it’s users. Had Xero still be going now I would happily go back.

I have as advised turned to Pocketsmith.com (which I paid to use aswell) and have found it a more than sub par tool for managing a budget. It misses the very thing that made Xero Personal Brilliant. They put all their focus on forecasting and leave you with a watered down budgeting section. The very section that if done right allows the user to maximise his available Cash and ultimate hit the savings goals which every user is aiming for. Such a big thing and such a big miss. At the end of the day, I am prepared to spend time using the system if I can meet my savings goals and manage my buget to get there. But I feel restricted.

Then there is getpocketbook.com a lovely looking tool but really only a tool for those who want to spend as little time as possible doing their budget it lacks a lot of features and I quickly found my self having out grown the tool.

I think it is evident that people want to budget and get the finances in order. And Xero Personal was certainly the best at this, although I do think the price would have put people of and certainly a lower entry point would have attracted bigger numbers of people, not to mention getting the word out a bit (but I get it wasn’t a priority Xero is screaming and I take my hat off to them). But the true tragedy of the loss is that there is no successor the market is wide open and those that try seem to only go half way. My hope is that somewhere out there, there is a few college kids or a couple of bright minded individuals working after hours burning the candle building what they know will be successful, because there is a market desperate for a tool to fill the shoes of the giant(in my opinion) that was Xero Personal.

Thanks fro a great product and enabling my wife and I to reach our goals.

To systems mentioned above, I’m sorry to give you a hard time, you are close but I know you can do better and I hope if you read my comments you see it as critique that might push you forward.

I have known about Xero as a small business accounting alternative which worked well but just recently realized there was something for personal use which from what I can tell would be a great value to me and wouldn’t mind paying a fair price for. What I am trying to say is that I am sure there are a lot of individuals who simply don’t know the product exists and through much searching on my part there is a need for something better than Mint or other personal finance management software.

Bummer for us, we thought you did a great job with the personal software! Being self-employed the personal and business accounts were somewhat intertwined and our accountant had one place to see them all.

However I understand there’s a big difference between private and corporate sectors and your desire to just focus on doing one of them really well. So it’s all good, we can handle it 🙂

For anyone reading this late we have moved our personal finances to Pocketsmith and we are in the UK. It is a far superior to product to Xero Personal as the forecasting has allowed us to make much better budgeting and money management decisions. It can be quite difficult to get up and running but worth sticking at it.

Even my long suffering partner now has a grasp and understands not only where we have been but where we are going.

I have been using XP with BNZ and love it, it does everything I need. I see NAB offer Money Tracker in Australia and it is free to customers. I am wanting BNZ to bring this application to NZ and offer it to its customers. I appreciate Xero has dropped the ball but hope the bank can step up and offer a smooth transition.

I realise open source this was mentioned earlier, but if that’s not an option, hand over the source on a commercial basis with a small royalty stream coming back to Xero if the incumbent can make a go of it? Think of it as investing in a startup (like you guys were once), except instead of cash, you provide them the start of a great product? I’d love to champion this..

I have used Xero business for years and only today have I just found the perfect app for me on the app store, Xero personal. It is exactly what i need. How did i know of this is before today just by chance. But hang on, i cant set up a profile and apparently its being discontinued. That is a great shame. I would of loved to have a Xero personal app after enjoying the great things that come with Xero business. Please reconsider, I am sure there are plenty of people who would valuably pay for Xero personal. And i bet most of them will all be customers or users of Xero business.

I understand the decision and suspect the two different codes being different teams and resource hogs.
However, it is a fact that all the business accounts have personal accts and in the case of med to large businesses, multiple accts.
A stripped down version of the business model would work for those registered with you for business accts surely?

If you’re looking for alternatives to Xero Personal, and Pocketsmith isn’t to your liking – we are building an awesome new PFM at http://www.financial.me
So far we’ve got a fully functional automatic data import via Yodlee, an innovative interactive graph concept, and basic budgeting. We have a long list of features still to build, so if you want to help us shape the product, we would love to have you onboard.
(p.s. I hope this doesn’t sound spammy, I did get permission from Rod to post here)